A “Becoming” Excerpt in sequence:

“A Becoming Wedding Day”

The entire wedding party taken to dinner at a nearby restaurant by the parents of the groom, Mitchell looked for a sign of hostility or animosity between Marsha and his mother, but at the moment, happily, there did not appear to be any.

Marsha and Mitchell went to the homes of their parents, to sleep alone for the last time, in the eyes of God, as unmarried people.

___________________________________________________________

Chicago, Illinois

December 17, 1955:

The Day of the Wedding …

Clear and cold that morning, there was about four inches of new snow on the ground but the streets were relatively dry as Mitchell and Walter drove to the formal wear shop on Devon Avenue where they tried on their rented tuxedos.

Everything fitting properly, they took them from the shop on over-sized hangers inside large, white plastic bags weighed down by the bulk of their black, patent leather shoes.

After driving to the Goldman apartment, Walter waited in the car as his son ran into the building to get Marsha.

“You okay? You look even paler than yesterday.”

“Yes, I’m fine, Mitchie.” She didn’t know how to tell him. “It’s just the anticipation, and all this excitement is getting to me.”

“Maybe you’ll feel better after breakfast.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Thinking, God, I wish it were that simple.

Also thinking… hoping her quiet demeanor will cover the bitter — since the ‘coffee’ incident — animosity toward Walter while doing her best to be naturally cordial to him.

At a ‘Sambos’ Mitchell had his usual of orange juice and coffee, eggs over easy, pork sausage, crispy hash-brown potatoes and a toasted English muffin with cream cheese. Walter had the same, but with ham instead of sausage. Marsha, looking as though she were ill, had toast and tea.

Dawdling over his third cup of coffee, “Come on, Dad!” Prodding his father to drink faster, because…

**** 

“My, ‘God’, Myron, I can’t believe it! It’s ‘fantastic’!”

“Bill and me, we kind’a thought you kids’ll like it.”

“ ‘Like it’?” Slightly revived, “I ‘love’ it!” Marsha said.

The cream-colored top was down on the sleek, navy-blue ‘52 Ford convertible —with automatic transmission — revealing the dashboard, AM/FM radio, steering wheel, and dark-blue, leather upholstery.

“Hmmm?” Always trying to think of ways to placate Myra, ‘especially’ during the sailing season. “Wonder if your mother would like a convertible?” Walter asked, thinking, But even if she doesn’t, I would!

“If you’d like, I’ll keep a lookout for one, Walt.”

“Yeah, do that, Myron.” Handing him a business card. “Give me a call at the office, but if a lady answers, just leave your name and tell her to tell me to call you back.” Looking at Mitchell, “Don’t say anything to your mother, okay!”

“Sure, Dad.” Patting Marsha on the behind, “One of the first things I’m going to do when we get to Seagate is to teach you how to drive.”

“That sounds…” A sharp pain shooting through her lower abdomen, trying to hide it with a weak smile, “…great.”

Noting the catch in her voice, looking at her closely, “You ‘sure’ you’re okay?”

“Yes,” squeezing his hand, “I’m fine. It’s just that I have so much to do today.” Glancing at her watch, “Maybe we’d better get started back.”

The pain worse while standing, anxious to sit down. “I’ve got to be at the beauty shop by one, and if they’re going to have enough time to make me beautiful, I’d better be on time.” Also finding it difficult to continue the facade of friendliness to her father-in-law.

“Honey, you’ve plenty of time! And besides, you’re beautiful just the way you are.”

Considering the way Marsha looked today, he really didn’t mean it.

“Look kids, I’ve got to be heading home, too,” Walter said. “I’ve got a barber’s appointment and, knowing your mother...” looking from Marsha to Mitchell, “...she’ll have a million things for me to do this afternoon... Tell you what; why don’t you two take the Buick and I’ll drive that wreck,” jerking his thumb towards the Ford convertible.

“Yeah, ‘sure’, Dad. ‘Fat’ chance!”

He’d felt Marsha’s coolness since the night of the coffee cup incident and ‘sorely’ missed her affection.

Now, putting his arms about her. “In case I haven’t told you, and in case I don’t have time later, I do want you to know that I’m ‘very’ happy to have you for a daughter.”

Looking into her eyes, Walter silently begged for forgiveness. But Marsha’s arms hanging limply by her sides, Walter received ‘nothing’ in return.

Attempting to hide his disappointment, getting into the Buick and waving half-heatedly, “See you later.” Walter closed the door.

“Bye, Dad.”

Knowing that Marsha did have a great fondness for his father, bewildered by her coldness to him but unwilling to question her, or to get into an argument about it on this day. Holding the door open for her. “Okay, baby...” waving to Myron, “l...et’s see how this thing drives.”

****

“So, how’s it feel, Mitch?”

“Marcie, It’s ‘wonderful’! It drives like a dream… Look, it’s not too far out of the way, and I promise to get you there in plenty of time. Come on with me, I want to show the car to my mother.”

Looking at her watch, then the clock in the dashboard, “The clock seems to keep good time… Sure, I want to see your mother’s face when she sees it.”

**** 

Parking directly in front of the house, as Mitchell ran to get his mother— because she wanted to see the look on Myra’s face—Marsha slid into the driver’s seat.

Coming out of the house with a coat over her shoulders. Looking at the car but apparently seeing ‘only’ Marsha. “What’s ‘she’ doing here?” Myra said loud enough for Marsha to hear and without another word, turning, going back in the house and —rattling the windows— Myra slammed the door shut.

“Huh?” Flinching at the sound of the slamming door. Bewilderment showing on his face as standing with his mouth open he looked at Marsha, “Huh?” then at the door.

Hurt and angry. “Mitchell, ‘come on’!”

Taking a step towards the house, “What in the hell was that about?”

“ ‘No’! Come on, Mitch!” Sliding to the passenger seat, Marsha did not want him fighting with his mother today, of all days.

“Just get me to the beauty shop, please!”

“But, why?”

“ ‘Please’!”

“Why’d she do that?” Getting into the car. “Everything was fine last night! What in ‘hell’s’ bugging her?”

“Your mother’s nervous about tonight.”

Starting the motor. “Yeah, aren’t we all!” Pulling away from the curb. “I don’t understand! Why’d she do that?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you all along. I don’t ‘know’ why she does these things.”

“But Marcie, everything was ‘fine’ last night. I watched to see if there was any problem between you two, and there wasn’t. And I know you haven’t talked to her since then! So what in hell happened to make her act that way?”

Taking a deep breath. “Your mother’s been doing this to me ever since we became engaged. Everything’ll be okay one minute, then the next she’s mad at me and I never know why.” Sometimes, though, she did.

“Sorry, baby. I don’t know what she’s trying to prove.”

Snuggling close, “Mitchie, don’t let what happened just now bother you and spoil our day. We have this beautiful new car and we’re getting married tonight…”

“In the eyes of God!”

“Yes, ‘in the eyes of God’, and tomorrow we’ll go home.”

“Yeah, and tonight…” he said slyly, kissing her forehead.

Knowing what he was thinking. Knowing it was time she told him. “Mitchell,” she said seriously, “I’ve got to tell you something.”

...Looking at her, Marsha’s expression and tone of voice causing his heart to lurch because for a second he unreasonably—especially since she’d just said, ‘we’re getting married tonight’—thought she was going to tell him that she didn’t want to marry him. “What’s wrong?”

“Mitchell, I’ve… I don’t know how to tell you this, but… Look, it wasn’t supposed to happen for another nine days and that’s one of the reasons we picked today for the wedding, but…”

Alarmed, steering to the curb, “Marsha,” putting the car in Park, “what’s the matter?”

“Last night… I, uh, I got my period.”

“ ‘Your period’?” Relieved that that’s all it was…. for a moment. Then ‘my period’ sunk in. “ ‘Now’!” he said in an accusatory tone of voice. “You got your period ‘now’?!”

“Yes. More than a week early. I’d guess because of all the excitement. But I wa’sn’t feeling well yesterday…”

“Yeah, I know,” he said facetiously. “Whenever I come home you get sick!”

Ignoring him, again, “….and when I woke with cramps last night, I prayed that it wasn’t, but this morning I knew it was.”

“And,” he said thoughtlessly, “that’s why you look so lousy?”

A bit upset at his choice of words. “Yes, I guess. The cramps are terrible the first couple of days.”

“Isn’t there anything you can take?”

“For the pain?” Thinking he may mean for a way to eliminate her menstrual cycle.

“Yes, of ‘course’, for the pain.”

“Sure, pain pills. I took one when I got up this morning, but it’s worn off now.”

“And this means we don’t…?” Remembering. ‘yuckie’… “We can’t… No sex?”

“Yes.”

Yes! “Yes?” he said hopefully.

“Yes! ‘No’! I don’t mean yes we ‘can’, I mean yes, we ‘can’t’.”

Sighing, looking out the window, I should have known! “Marcie...” turning back, taking her hand, “...I know it’s not your fault and I know you don’t feel well, and I know that you’re looking forward to ‘it’ as much as me…” Thinking, No one could possibly be looking forward to it as much as me!

“Yes, Mitch...” she said sincerely, “...of course I was… I ‘am’!”

“Marcie… there’s something I want to tell you.” He had debated with himself whether or not to tell her and he’d come to the conclusion that not only would Marsha appreciate his honesty, but also the fact that they’ll be doing it with each other, ‘truly’, for the first time. “...I’ve… never gone ‘all the way’ with a girl.”

Disbelievingly, “What?”

“I said I’ve never gone all the way with a girl.”

Almost every guy she knew had gone all the way with some girl. Not that she’d asked, of course, or that they had all told her—well, some of the jerks with big mouths bragged about all the times they’d done it.

Also, she’d heard some of her girlfriends talk—not that any of her ‘girlfriends’ had gone ‘all the way’ because if they had and she found out they wouldn’t be girlfriends for very long—But some of her girlfriends had talked about guys they knew—leastwise all the guys that weren’t ‘creeps’—had done it, or said, or intimated that they’d done it.

Mitchell was one of the best looking boys she’d ever known. And Marsha could not believe that ‘any’ guy that looked as he looked would not have gone all the way by this time with some girl… hell, with a ‘dozen’ girls!

“Mitchell,” she said, “I can’t believe it!”

“Marcie, don’t get the wrong impression; I’ve tried! Good, God, how I’ve tried! But all my life things have always happened to keep it from happening. Like when I was fifteen, a pal of mine, an Italian kid from the south side…”

Frankie!

Thinking of Frank Rizzo for the first time in years, feeling a pulling in his heart.

“…fixed me up with a shiksa… Frankie and me went to military school together during the war, and he’d told her about me, and she wanted to do it with me so she could see what a Jewish guy’s… you know, ‘thing’ looked like.” Remembering, he laughed.

Glad the tension over her period and Myra had eased, laughing with him, “What’s so funny?”

“ ‘Gina’—the shiksa’s name was Gina—Gina couldn’t understand why Jewish guys get circumcised, and the ‘big’ thing in her life was to see what I looked like with the tip of my… the tip whacked off.”

“ ‘Whacked off’?”

“Yeah. That’s what Gina called it: whacked off. And all she wanted was to see what mine looked like, and to, uh, go to bed with me.”

“Sounds like a ‘real’ nice girl. So, what happened?”

“I… I…” Laughing again, harder, “got drunk on homemade Italian wine and…” exaggerating slightly, “puked all over her.”

“Mitchie…” Holding her stomach— rocking back and forth with the cramping pain— exploding into laughter, “… you actually puked on her? I can’t believe it! Were you guys dressed, at least?”

“Nope. We were both naked.”

“You puked all over her, naked!”

“Yeah! And to top it off, we were in her girlfriend’s bed.”

“Oh, my God! You puked all over her, naked, in her girlfriend’s bed, yet. I can’t believe it!”

The laughter subsiding... Becoming serious again. Because ‘truly’ this was a serious subject, at least to Mitchell Lipensky.

“Yeah.” Going on with his ‘poor-Mitchie-why-he’d-never-been-able-to-go-all-the-way story’, “There were other times too. A girl that was ready to do it right then and there told me that if I do do it, she’ll make me marry her, so I didn’t, leastwise, we didn’t, uh, go all the way, uh, ‘that way’.”

“Uh, go all the way, ‘that way’? What way did you go, then?”

Not wanting to go into what he meant by ‘that way’. “I’ll tell you some other time.” Meaning, ‘I’ll show you some other time. Oh, yes!’

“And lots of girls said ‘no’, like you. Yeah, I know that sometimes when a girl says no she may really mean yes. But I can’t read what a girl means when she says one thing and really means something else. “And...”

...Completely passing on the ‘Ina Dorfmann’ story because, though, he knew—at least in retrospect—that the ‘flashlight’ episode was hilarious, he could not think of a delicate way to explain it. Nor a way to tell Marsha the story without sounding like a complete idiot.

However, in any case, no longer embarrassed at being a virgin at age twenty-one. “in case you haven’t noticed, I’m a nice guy, and when a girl says no to me, it’s no.”

“Yeah, I remember,” she said, half jokingly, “that’s when you become a centipede.”

“Yeah, Marcie, you know I keep trying, but I’d never force any girl to do what I think she doesn’t want to do no matter how much I may want to and, oh, baby…” bringing her hand to his lips, kissing her knuckles, “...you know how much I’ve wanted to!”

“Yeah, I sure do. But, Mitchie, look at you! Almost every guy I know has… ‘you kno’w’.”

“How do you know they have? Not all guys that say they have, really have.”

“And you’re a sailor, yet! Everyone knows about sailors!”

“Okay. So how do sailors meet ‘that kind of girl’?” Answering himself, “ ‘In bars’! I’ve gone to bars, too, but I’ve got to, at least ‘like’ someone before, I… uh, make love to her… Hell, before I even kiss her!”

Marsha could, certainly, respect that.

“And I’ve never met a girl in a bar that I’ve liked enough to want to go to bed with.”

Well, he had. But though the girl was beautiful her hair reeked of tobacco and her breath of bourbon, and her body had an underlying odor of sweat. And even though he had received definite ‘come on, let’s go do it’ signals, he’d backed away.

“I did meet a girl at the USO in Manhattan, though, and...”—suddenly realizing why—“Do you know what attracted me to her?”

“She vas gorgeous un’ so sexy!” Marsha said in her yiddish dialect.

Laughing. “No! As a matter of fact, it was because she reminded me of you.”

“Well,” she said jokingly, “ ‘thanks a lot’!”

“No, I didn’t mean it that way… It was right after I got back from leave; you know, that first time when we saw each other at the J. And ‘Chriss’… the girl’s name was Christine… Well, I didn’t know it at the time, but what attracted me to her was that she reminded me of you. She was an actress, and…”

“Yeah, that’s what I said, she was ‘gorgeous and sexy’.”

“Nah. Skinny as hell with stringy, black hair—Only kidding. She had long, black hair, and was tall and thin, like you. Chriss had this great apartment overlooking the city, and she took me to it and we had some scotch—a ‘lot’ of scotch—and ‘believe’ me, she wanted to do it with me as much as I wanted to do it to her! But…” his voice trailed off.

“ ‘But’?”

“But…” He smiled. “But, ‘she had her period’.”

“Oh, ‘no’!” This said in mock horror.

“Yeah...” he replied, “...and we went on patrol the next day and by the time I got back she’d moved and I couldn’t find her.”

“Oh, you ‘poor thing’!” she said facetiously.

“Yeah! Then me and the girl I love got married, and guess what?”

“ ‘Uh-oh’!”

“Yeah! ‘Uh-oh’s’ right! And then! Just to be on the safe side, and sure it’s okay with God and our… ‘your’ mother, we waited another two months and even got married again! And guess what again?”

“ ‘Oh, no’!”

“Yeah!” Becoming serious. “Really, Marcie, maybe it was meant to be this way. Maybe that’s why I always got stopped. Maybe God meant for me to do it only with you for the first time and for you to do it with me the first time. And if you think about it, except for this...” pointing to her crotch, “...you having your period now, it’s really kind of beautiful.”

Having a chance to think about it, the thought of both of them losing their virginity together, to each other, ‘truly’ did seem rather beautiful. “Yes,” Marsha said, “I think so, too… You’re not mad, then, because of my period?”

“Well, yeah! Bet your ‘ass’, I’m mad! But it’s not your fault.”

“Know what, Mitch? In six days it’ll be even more beautiful.”

“ ‘Six days’ ! I can’t wait six ‘fucking’ days!”

The loud expletive surprising her. “No, Mitchell, not six…” struggling with the words, “fucking days! Six ‘fuckless’ days!”

Surprised, too, “Marsha, that’s the first time I’ve ever heard you swear.” Starting to laugh. “Coming from you, it’s kind’a cute. Come on, say it again! Say ‘fuck’.”

“No!” Though pale, blushing, red spots appeared on her cheeks. “You know I never swear! It’s just that you made me so darn mad.”

“I’m sorry, but ‘six days’! We’ll miss our whole honeymoon.”

“What am I supposed do, Mitchell? You want to call it off—the wedding?”

Looking out the window, pretending to think.“Nah, I love this car too much to give it back to your uncle.”

Marsha punched him on the shoulder.

“ ‘Ouch’! Hey, you got bony knuckles!”

“Yeah! And if you ever say anything like that again…”

“Yeah?” Rubbing his shoulder, faking pain and anger. “An’ what if I do? What’ch’ya gonna do ’bout it?”

Balling her fist, tapping his chin, “I’ll sock ya in the kisser.”

“Boy-oh-boy, ain’t she ever sweet!”

“Come on,” kissing him on the cheek, “I’ve got to get to the beauty shop!”

“Where’s it again?”

“On Peterson.”

  **** 

“Marcie, you got a picture of your fiance?” Standing behind the chair, combing her out. “I want to show it to her,” nodding her head towards an extremely pretty, dark-haired young woman two stations down.

“Do I have a picture?” Looking at the beautician’s reflection in the mirror. “Are you kidding?” Opening the purse on her lap. Taking her wallet out and thumbing through some pictures, Marsha handed Erma a snapshot of Mitchell taken on ‘Friendship’ the summer before.

Looking at it a moment then walking to the young woman. “Take a look at this guy,” Erma said, handing the picture over the woman’s shoulder.

Taking the picture, holding it in front of her face. The young woman’s eyes opening widely. Swallowing while chewing nervously on her lower lip, the young woman looked at the photo for what must have been at least thirty seconds….

Looking up, she studied Marsha’s reflection in the long mirror.

Waiting. Watching the reflectionin the mirror to see the usual reaction to Mitchell’s looks, Marsha was baffled at the play of emotions she saw on the woman’s face.

Looking into the reflected image of the others’ eyes, the two women silently studied each other.

“He’s, uh…” Searching for the right words, seemingly unnerved. “Your boyfriend’s…”

“He’s ‘not’ my boyfriend...” Marsha corrected, “...he’s my fiancé. We’re being married tonight.”

“ ‘Tonight’…” Blinking her eyes several times. Quiet a long moment. “You and Mitchell are being married…” she questioned softly, “...tonight?”

Mitchell?

Sitting a bit straighter. “Yes, we are, tonight.” Watching closely. “Do you know Mitchell?”

Taking a few seconds for the other to speak. “Yes.” she said faintly. “We used to know each other.”

Turning her face downward, somewhat away from Marsha’s questioning gaze. “Tell him...” the young woman said haltingly, “...that…” swallowing again, her lower lip quivering. “Please tell Mitchell that Susan Friedman wishes him… Both of you… good luck.”

At any time you can turn a corner or cross a street to get a hot fudge sundae and your life is changed forever.

Next “Becoming” excerpt in sequence: 

 A Becoming Wedding Night